France has decided to reduce the size of its contingent present on Ivorian soil since 2015. This is what emerged from the visit of the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, to Ivory Coast on Monday 20 February.
On a visit to Abidjan, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, recognised, on Monday 20 February, the “remarkable efforts made in building up the security apparatus in Ivory Coast”. “The army in Ivory Coast today is nothing like it was ten years ago,” he said. This is why France has decided to withdraw its soldiers deployed at the Port Bouët base in Ivory Coast. According to Paris, the Ivorian army is capable of ensuring its own security.
“This makes Ivory Coast a country of stability whose role as a regional balancing power is increasingly established,” Lecornu said, adding that “it makes no sense to maintain a French combat unit that does the same thing as the Ivorians.
Furthermore, in a context of growing contestation of France in West Africa, Paris is trying to reflect on the re-articulation of the French presence on the continent. Some 1000 French soldiers are present on Ivorian soil. And France intends from now on to devote itself more to the training of the Ivorian army without forgetting to create an intimacy between the French defence industrialists and the Ivorian authorities in order to accompany the modernisation of the army.
Note that the French forces in Ivory Coast were created on 1 January 2015. Note that the French forces in Ivory Coast were created on 1 January 2015. As one of France’s strongest allies in West Africa, the French forces deployed in this country constitute one of the two forward operational bases in Africa.
